GOP defector says party is 'out of touch'

Voters want more than tax cuts, says Rep. Rodney Tom

OLYMPIA -- State Rep. Rodney Tom recently bailed out of the Republican Party, saying a rightward-drifting GOP has no room for progressives and moderates.

The Democrats are all too happy to agree with Tom, and see him as the poster child for Democrats making inroads in the changing battleground districts around Seattle.

But Republicans say that's all hogwash, and that today's party isn't the hard-right preserve of religious conservatives that it was a decade ago, when backers of Pat Robertson and Ellen Craswell took over. If anything, Republicans tolerate broader diversity of thought today than the Democrats do, state GOP Chairwoman Diane Tebelius said.

Still, an influential group of "raging moderates," the Mainstream Republicans of Washington, said Tom, a former board member, makes some unsettling accusations that the party must hear.

The group celebrates its 25th annual Cascade Conference next month, with leaders saying it's still an open question whether the GOP will truly be a big tent party that offers progressive candidates in the state's swing districts.

"Forever there has been this tension" between the party's staunch conservatives and the more moderate wing that embraces environmental protection, social programs, abortion rights and equal treatment of women, minorities and gays, Secretary of State Sam Reed said.

Problem-solving moderation is the only way to aspire to majority party status in a state that now looks pretty "blue," he and other mainstreamers said.

Reed, co-founder of the conference and chairman of the May 19-21 gathering, said voters gravitate toward candidates who are fiscal conservatives and social moderates. Indeed, moderates are the only Republicans who get elected to statewide office, and the party's hope of winning back the Legislature hinges on whether it nominates progressive candidates in the battleground districts, Reed said.

Tom's defection to the Democrats may signify nothing more than one individual's political calculation that he's out of synch with the GOP and more likely to advance his, and the 48th District's, agenda with a different label.

Tom and the Democrats, though, read the situation a little more broadly.

Tom, a four-year member of the House, said his district is progressive, includes many unaffiliated voters, and mainly just wants problems fixed. The well-educated suburban district wants better schools and transportation and the GOP always seems more preoccupied with cutting taxes, he said in an interview.

Tom found himself voting against his caucus and the state party when he was a "yes" on last year's big transportation tax package, which included massive appropriations for local and regional projects. His e-mail and phone lines were jammed with angry comments from Republican activists in his district.

That was probably the tipping point, he said, but he also broke with the party over simple-majority school levy approval, abortion rights, gay civil rights and children's services.

"The far right has taken over the party," and it was increasingly hard to properly represent the 48th as a Republican, he said.

"I think I'm a centrist, a pragmatist," Tom said.

"Personally, I have not changed. I have seen (Republican Sen.) Luke Esser and the party continue to drift right. Especially in the suburbs, they're out of touch."

While the Republican Party flatly rejects that view, Reed and others said Tom is saying something the party needs to hear.

"It's a good teachable moment," Reed said. "If Rodney had been courted more by the party people, he wouldn't have felt alienated to the point of actually leaving the party."

Moderates by nature don't seem to like trench warfare and organizing, said independent pollster Stuart Elway, who has watched the mainstream movement ebb and flow for 30 years.

"If Tom is any bellwether, more moderates are likely to defect than to try to take over the party," he said.

Some Republicans are waiting to see who gets the party nod for the White House, to see if the nominee moves the center of gravity a little closer to the middle, he said.

The Mainstream conference has Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as the featured speaker. Sen. John McCain, another favorite of the group, recently visited Washington to stump for Senate-hopeful Mike McGavick, who is running with Mainstreamers' blessings.

Democrats say Washington is getting "bluer" by the day, as swing voters react to Republicans at the national level.

"The Republican Party ran up an $8 trillion deficit in Washington, D.C., and they've become part of a culture of corruption, so that's why people like Rodney Tom are having trouble identifying with the Republicans," said Dwight Pelz, chairman of the state Democrats. "The national realities are going to play out in places like Bellevue."

State Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, also expects gains. "To me, it's somewhat reminiscent of 1994 when people were switching parties in the other direction," she said. "There is disillusionment with what's coming out of Washington, D.C."

Republicans concede that it could be a rough year, but flatly deny any lurch to the right.

"This is not the Republican Party of 20 years ago," said Tebelius, the new state chairwoman. "We don't have a litmus test. There are many degrees of difference in our party, and we recognize that it takes different types of candidates to fit their districts. We accept that.

She and other Republicans said Tom's party switch has no broader significance.

"I think it's an aberration," said state Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way, a leader of House moderates. He said he made some of the same votes Tom did, and that he and other moderates are welcome in their caucus.

Co-chairman of the House Republicans' campaign committee, Priest said the key is to tailor the candidate to the district -- and that Republicans are doing that. A new breed of candidate is pragmatic, not a hard-edged partisan, he said.

"There is no chance for the Republican Party to become a majority party if our symbol is the stop sign," he said.

Esser, the senator who faces Tom this fall, said Tom, not Esser or the district, changed. The district will support a rock-ribbed conservative who cares about education, jobs, roads and other challenges, he said.

"No party fits any area perfectly," said Sen. Bill Finkbeiner, of Kirkland, who shifted to the Republicans in 1994 and whose vote helped put the gay rights bill over the top this year. "It's always uncomfortable" for the individual lawmaker who opposes party orthodoxy, but it's done all the time.